high expectations...? *longish*

all i want is bagsThread Starter

does anyone else ever get to a point where nothing seems "good enough"? i mean like...its not functional enough, or its not the quality you expect, or you cant justify the price in relation to the materials/craftsmanship?

this feeling has come about very recently when i went to bal harbour last weekend. went to lv, and none of the bags i looked at seemed glitzy or nice enough (all of the lv cup bags have weird hardware that looks cheap, all of the new damier geant bags are really thin, etc)...went to hermes, where there was a black nylon flight bag for $1275, which i just couldnt justify...and a $1250 green canvas messenger in bottega was really cheap feeling with little white specks of cloth/paper on it...

i dont know, maybe im just over-saturated with lux goods, that i no longer find things that give me that pure excitement feeling...

In a H dream...

oh, sorry about your 'feeling'. Maybe its because you have reached the point now where you actually have all the bags you love and need!? Personally I think thats a great place to be! Its probably just a phase, but in the mean time just admire and love the fantastic bags you already have! x

hold me back, girls

i DO know what you mean. As quality hasn't appeared to be the focus of any designer brand here in america. Price goes up, quality goes down, and we swallow it like we are supposed to. Justifying it with 'but i love it' and 'the craftsmanship' <<<Pfffh. I know. But it hasn't stopped me yet. Just slowed me down, sadly. I keep hoping the next few seasons will shape up.

Member

i know what you mean, i actually stopped buying LV for a few *gulp* years because i just didn't feel there was anything i wanted and nothing appealed to me. i still get that way sometimes and the best way is to just step away for awhile and come back with a fresh eyes and mind to the products. it certainly helped me and alot of us go thru this i'm sure.

all i want is bagsThread Starter

i know what you mean, i actually stopped buying LV for a few *gulp* years because i just didn't feel there was anything i wanted and nothing appealed to me. i still get that way sometimes and the best way is to just step away for awhile and come back with a fresh eyes and mind to the products. it certainly helped me and alot of us go thru this i'm sure.

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i think you're right. time to obsess about something else for a change! haha...

More LV Please...

I understand what you mean. I have seen many LV bags and other designer bags as of late ---Particularly the LV cup bags. I just can't understand why anyone would want one of those. I don't care if they have the LV logo...just looks like something you'd buy from Walmart or Target to me. That's just my opinion of course.
It's as if they are running out of ideas and just throwing anything out there because they know there are some who are label obsessed and will buy anything with their respective labels on it. Not me. I'll stick with the classics.

Urban Archaeologist

I'm just beginning to explore luxury goods and I have no particular expectations of any brand. But, I was shocked and dismayed at the poor quality, relative to what I expected, from Louis Vuitton and I suspect that cost-cutting measures are truly making these big companies make lower quality bags.

There was an upstairs boutique at LV-BH where the "good stuff" was, but there was a huge quantity of LV low to midrange downstairs, and it made me just want to giggle, that people were paying $385 (and they were) for these thin-leather, plasticky looking key holders.

I wandered through Fendi, Armani and Chanel stores - and thought the Chanel quality was amazing, totally understood the Chanel-love. I was looking for sunglasses, though the LV quality was atrocious, so were Gucci's, this year (and I own some nice Gucci's from the past).

One factor, as reported recently in a couple of major newspapers, is that France and Italy both have relatively lax laws - and, until recently, lax enforcement of what it means to be "made in France" or "made in Italy." It's a problem all over the world - how to mark where things are made. It's obvious a lot of the processing is being done in China, and have people have posted here, and I've talked to people IRL, who have observed certain parts of the leather goods process being completed in China.

For years, Morocco and Algeria provided a huge number of the calf and cowskins that we're all consuming - and a lot of the initial leathertanning process. Then, the skins went off to Italy for special dyes and processes (someone needs to write a book about this, actually).

Now, a lot of the processes are shipped to China, and it shows. It would be very hard to convince me that LV sunglasses (as an example) are made anywhere in Europe, given that they are plastic, after all, and the industrial processes involved are relatively polluting (banned in many European countries outright - it's hard to imagine where these big plastic industries would be, in Europe - but if anyone knows, please let me know.

Newgrl, ITA about the quality of LV - we were saying that Disney's logo products look to be about the same, I have to keep telling myself, that LV says it's real leather! I can't help but think, when I see people's gorgeous and older collections posted here, that the quality has to have changed.

Lifelong bag queen

all i want is bagsThread Starter

I'm just beginning to explore luxury goods and I have no particular expectations of any brand. But, I was shocked and dismayed at the poor quality, relative to what I expected, from Louis Vuitton and I suspect that cost-cutting measures are truly making these big companies make lower quality bags.

There was an upstairs boutique at LV-BH where the "good stuff" was, but there was a huge quantity of LV low to midrange downstairs, and it made me just want to giggle, that people were paying $385 (and they were) for these thin-leather, plasticky looking key holders.

I wandered through Fendi, Armani and Chanel stores - and thought the Chanel quality was amazing, totally understood the Chanel-love. I was looking for sunglasses, though the LV quality was atrocious, so were Gucci's, this year (and I own some nice Gucci's from the past).

One factor, as reported recently in a couple of major newspapers, is that France and Italy both have relatively lax laws - and, until recently, lax enforcement of what it means to be "made in France" or "made in Italy." It's a problem all over the world - how to mark where things are made. It's obvious a lot of the processing is being done in China, and have people have posted here, and I've talked to people IRL, who have observed certain parts of the leather goods process being completed in China.

For years, Morocco and Algeria provided a huge number of the calf and cowskins that we're all consuming - and a lot of the initial leathertanning process. Then, the skins went off to Italy for special dyes and processes (someone needs to write a book about this, actually).

Now, a lot of the processes are shipped to China, and it shows. It would be very hard to convince me that LV sunglasses (as an example) are made anywhere in Europe, given that they are plastic, after all, and the industrial processes involved are relatively polluting (banned in many European countries outright - it's hard to imagine where these big plastic industries would be, in Europe - but if anyone knows, please let me know.

Newgrl, ITA about the quality of LV - we were saying that Disney's logo products look to be about the same, I have to keep telling myself, that LV says it's real leather! I can't help but think, when I see people's gorgeous and older collections posted here, that the quality has to have changed.

Click to expand...

i like what you said...and i agree/see the same things. i cant justify $400+ for a pair of sunglasses from prada or gucci that feel so flimsy and insignificant. i actually have a pair of lv sunnies that are the nicest, most substantial-feeling sunglasses i have ever had/seen, but they are over a year old, and probable were from an earlier batch that might have been of better quality.

i think some lines are still classy and worth the money (a lot of the new monogram bags are to my liking, and the epi!), but things like the utah bags with "louis vuitton made in france" stamps on the inside being CROOKED (!!) is ridiculous.

i really love chanel bags...although the new paris-biarittz line is a tad chintzy (sp?), and hermes will probably always be great (too bad its SO EXPENSIVE!).